NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The dirname() function shall take a pointer to a character string that contains a pathname, and return a pointer to a
string that is a pathname of the parent directory of that file. Trailing '/' characters in the path are not counted as
part of the path.

If path does not contain a '/', then dirname() shall return a pointer to the string ".". If
path is a null pointer or points to an empty string, dirname() shall return a pointer to the string "."
.

The dirname() function need not be reentrant. A function that is not required to be reentrant is not required to be
thread-safe.

RETURN VALUE

The dirname() function shall return a pointer to a string that is the parent directory of path. If path is
a null pointer or points to an empty string, a pointer to a string "." is returned.

The dirname() function may modify the string pointed to by path, and may return a pointer to static storage that
may then be overwritten by subsequent calls to dirname().

ERRORS

No errors are defined.

The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES

The following code fragment reads a pathname, changes the current working directory to the parent directory, and opens the
file.